from the such-a-lovely-organization dept

For many, many years we've questioned the bizarre lawless nature of ICE -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- going back to the days when it was illegally seizing blogs, based on false claims of copyright infringement. We questioned what ICE had to do with censoring blogs in the first place. Of course, in the last year, ICE has been getting a lot more negative attention for something that is clearly under its purview: enforcement of immigration laws. Specifically, ICE has been almost gleefully demonstrating how they are thuggish bullies who are eager to deport as many people as possible. It's disgusting and inhumane -- and if you're going to be one of those people who pop up in our comments to say something ignorant about how if someone is here illegally they have no rights and should be booted as quickly as possible, go somewhere else to spout your nonsense. Also, seriously: take stock of your own priorities and look deeply at why you are so focused on destroying the lives of people who are almost certainly less well off and less privileged than you are, and who are seeking a better way of life.

Beginning in or about October, 2013, and continuing until on or about October 25, 2017, in the Western District of Washington, the defendant,

RAPHAEL A. SANCHEZ,

devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud financial institutions, including
American Express Company, Bank of America Corporation, Capital One Financial Corporation,
Citibank, Discover Financial Services, and JPMorgan Chase Co., by using the personally
identifying information of seven aliens in various stages of immigration proceedings with the
United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to obtain money and property by means of
materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and in doing so,
transmitted and caused to be transmitted by means of wire communications in interstate or foreign
commerce, writings, signals, and email communications for the purpose of executing such scheme
and artifice to defraud; including but not limited to the following email "that SANCHEZ caused to
be sent via interstate wires:

April 18, 2016: Email message sent from Raphael.Sanchez@ice.dhs.gov to Raphael.Sanchez@ice.dhs.gov and
Raphael_sanchez@yahoo.com, containing a Puget Sound Energy bill addressed to R.H. for service
at 3516 South Webster Street #A Seattle, Washington, and an
image of a United States permanent resident card and the
biographical page of a Chinese passport issued to R.H., originating
in Washington and utilizing email servers in West Virginia and
Mississippi.

That's the wire fraud part. The identity fraud part includes:

On or about July 5, 2016, in the Western District of Washington, the defendant,

RAPHAEL A. SANCHEZ,

did knowingly transfer, possess, and use, without lawful authority, a means of identification of
another person, including the name, Social Security number, and birth date of R.H., a real person,
during and in relation to a felony violation enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(c), to wit, wire fraud
in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343, as charged in Count One of this Information, in violation of 18
§ U.S.C. 1028A(a)(1). .

I assume as the case against Sanchez moves forward, more details will come out about what exactly happened here. But, remember, this is at the very same time as ICE is asking to be reclassified from a law enforcement agency to an intelligence agency, giving it much greater access to surveillance data -- without a warrant. Just imagine the kinds of identity fraud ICE lawyers could pull off with that access....

So, if we're trying to root out would-be terrorists and MS-13 gang members and undocumented immigrants with long domestic criminal rap sheets, why is ICE targeting people for their First Amendment activities? That's what one rights activist wants to know, and he's taking ICE to court to force it to explain itself. Kevin Gosztola of ShadowProof has more details.

Immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir, who recently had his deportation stayed by a federal court, the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, Casa de Maryland, Detention Watch Network, the New York Immigration Coalition and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild are all plaintiffs pursuing the First Amendment lawsuit.

“Federal immigration authorities have specifically targeted prominent and outspoken immigrant rights activists across the country on the basis of their speech and political advocacy on behalf of immigrants’ rights and social justice,” the lawsuit declares [PDF]. “These activists have been surveilled, intimidated, harassed, and detained, their homes have been raided, many have been plucked off the street in broad daylight, and some have even been deported.”

“The ‘broad discretion exercised by immigration officials,’ has been abused in a cynical effort to punish those who disagree with [President Donald Trump’s] administration. To sweep away all opposition. The government’s targeting of activists on the basis of their core political speech is unfair, discriminatory, and un-American. And it violates the First Amendment.”

Ragbir isn't dangerous. Nor should he be anyone's idea of someone ICE should expend resources deporting. Ragbir has lived in the US for 25 years, has advocated for people like him, and has generally been all the things we want from US citizens. The only problem is that he isn't one. He's faced a "final order of removal" since 2007, but that has been extended time and time again because he's someone who's a credit to this country, even if he doesn't have the paperwork in to make it permanent.

Despite this, ICE arrested him and sent him from New York to a Miami detention facility. He was not given any of the courtesies one expects would be given to someone who's lived peacefully and productively in the United States for a quarter-century. Instead, he was treated like the "worst of the worst," and not even given a chance to get his personal affairs in order or say goodbye to the family he would be leaving behind.

This resulted in a scathing court order from a federal judge in New York. The full order [PDF] is worth reading but here are a few of the highlights. It opens with this devastating paragraph and the heat never lets up.

There is, and ought to be in this great country, the freedom to say goodbye. That is, the freedom to hug one's spouse and children, the freedom to organize the myriad of human affairs that collect over time. It ought not to be -- and it has never before been -- that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home, and work. And sent away. We are not that country; and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it. We have a law higher than any that may be so interpreted -- and that is our Constitution. The wisdom of our Founders is evident in the document that demands and requires more; before the deprivation of liberty, there is due process; and an aversion to acts that are unnecessarily cruel.

[...]

In sum, the Court finds that when this country allowed petitioner to become part of our community fabric, allowed him to build a life with and among us and to enjoy the liberties and freedoms that come with that, it committed itself to allowance of an orderly departure when the time came, and it committed itself to avoidance of unnecessary cruelty when the time came. By denying petitioner these rights, the Government has acted wrongly.

While the court agrees ICE has the statutory authority to enforce deportation actions, it does not have the authority to pursue them in this manner. Its treatment of Ragbir was unconstitutional, given Ragbir's extended stay in the US without incident and frequent timely renewals of his work permit and permission to stay. The tactics used by ICE were cruel and capricious. And, as argued by Ragbir in his lawsuit, likely the result of ICE's disagreement with his First Amendment activities. All of this is unconstitutional, even if technically legal under ICE's statutory guidance.

Here, instead, the process we have employed has also been unnecessarily cruel. And those who are not subjected to such measures must be shocked by it, and find it unusual. That is, that a man we have allowed to live among us for years, to build a family and participate in the life of the community, was detained, handcuffed, forcibly placed on an airplane, and today finds himself in a prison cell. All of this without any showing, or belief by ICE that there is any need to show, that he would not have left on his own if simply told to do so; there has been no showing or even intimation that he would have fled or hidden to avoid leaving as directed. And certainly there has been no showing that he has not conducted himself lawfully for years. Taking such a man, and there are many such men and women like him, and subjecting him to what is rightfully understood as no different or better than penal detention, is certainly cruel. We as a country need and must not act so. The Constitution commands better.

Ragbir isn't suing ICE simply because of its targeting of him. His lawsuit points out he's not the only activist ICE has taken action against, using similar unconstitutional tactics.

ICE agents arrested Jean Montrevil, a Haitian national immigrant rights activist, co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition, and green card holder, on January 3. It was mere days before Ragbir’s check-in, which led to his detention. Montrevil was deported to Haiti on January 9. Authorities forced him to leave his four children—all U.S. citizens.

According to the lawsuit, Montrevil’s lawyer asked Scott Mechkowski, the ICE Deputy Field Office Director for New York, why ICE agents were deployed to “apprehend” Montrevil at his home “months before his scheduled check-in.”

“We [ICE] war-gamed this over and over,” Mechkowski apparently replied. “[T]his was the best time and place to take him.”

Several more are listed in the lawsuit (and covered by Shadowproof). In each case, immigrants appear to have been targeted for their activism or engagement with entities providing shelter and care for other immigrants. None of those listed faced deportation for illegal acts and many of those had lived in the States for years, raising families and becoming positive additions to their communities.

ICE has been given free rein by the current administration which never misses an opportunity to portray undocumented immigrants as inherently dangerous. If this lawsuit goes far enough, it should lay bare ICE's forays into unconstitutional behavior.

from the get-some-backdoor-searches-to-go-with-the-front-door-raids dept

Internal advocates for joining the America’s spy agencies—known as the Intelligence Community or the IC—focus on the potential benefits to the agency’s work on counterproliferation, money laundering, counterterror, and cybercrime. The official added that joining the IC could also be useful for the agency’s immigration enforcement work––in particular, their efforts to find and arrest undocumented immigrants with criminal arrest warrants (known in ICE as fugitive aliens).

At this point, no one other than a few ICE officials really wants this to happen. Privacy and accountability activists say the last thing the White House should do is give the agency access to warrantless surveillance. ICE is a domestic enforcement agency and has no need to root around in foreign-facing data collections. The agency, however, feels foreign intel -- along with the unmentioned backdoor searches of domestic communications -- could aid it in tracking down drug traffickers, money launders, and various cybercriminals.

But it shouldn't have direct access. Nor should it ever really need it. Information sharing has been expanded, thanks to the last president, which means ICE likely already receives second-hand info from other IC members like the DHS, FBI, and DEA. Former government officials are wary of the idea of direct intel access, noting that it would result in more complications, rather than better immigration and customs enforcement. Peter Vincent, ICE's general counsel under Obama, had this to say:

Unlike most intelligence agencies, which focus on gathering information about America’s adversaries, ICE’s agents and officers deal with federal courts every day. If they use classified material to generate leads, that information could be inadmissible in court. Both the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which are in the Intelligence Community, deal with this issue. Adjusting would be a challenge for ICE.

Vincent said this could create “many potential mission creep spectres, especially in this current climate,” and that he doesn’t think it would be necessary for ICE to join the Intelligence Community.

We've seen how well dips into NSA stores has worked for these two law enforcement agencies. Parallel construction becomes the rule, rather than the exception, and cases are far more likely to be dropped if defense lawyers and judges start asking too many questions about presented evidence.

Another former DHS intelligence official claims the added intel would do little more than "complicate the architecture," making it harder for ICE to do its job. If critical information needs to be shared with ICE, it could be done by bringing the head of ICE in on intel meetings, rather than adding ICE into the IC mix and adding yet another set of minimization rules to intel sharing.

Bad idea or not, the push for ICE to join the Intelligence Community comes at the right time. While Trump has been extremely critical of other IC components -- particularly the FBI -- he's very fond of his domestic immigration enforcers, having given them free rein to enforce the law in whatever way they see fit.

from the papers-please,-says-ICE-to-all-vehicles-in-the-nation dept

ICE is finally getting that nationwide license plate reader database it's been lusting after for several years. The DHS announced plans for a nationwide database in 2014, but decided to rein that idea in after a bit of backlash. The post-Snowden political climate made many domestic mass surveillance plans untenable, if not completely unpalatable.

Times have changed. The new team in the White House doesn't care how much domestic surveillance it engages in as long as it might aid in rooting out foreign immigrants. The first move was the DHS's updated Privacy Impact Assessment on license plate readers -- delivered late last year -- which came to the conclusion that any privacy violations were minimal compared to the national security net benefits.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians.

For those counting tax beans, the good news is this database won't cost much. Billions of license plate records have already been collected (and continue to be collected). All the winning contractor has to do is hook ICE up to the firehose.

The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data. “Like most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from license plate readers as one tool in support of its investigations,” spokesperson Dani Bennett said in a statement. “ICE is not seeking to build a license plate reader database, and will not collect nor contribute any data to a national public or private database through this contract.”

Nice use of wiggle words to minimize ICE's new surveillance power. ICE won't "build" a database. Great, but it doesn't need to. Vigilant has been collecting records for years via private companies and partnerships with law enforcement agencies. Around two billion plate/location records are already stored by Vigilant, presumably indefinitely. According to the Verge report, ICE will have access to at least five years of records for historical searches.

But ICE won't be just be diving into Vigilant's plate record archives. ICE will also be able to hand Vigilant "hot lists" for automatic notification any time the nation's many ALPR cameras capture a shot of targeted license plates.

ICE agents can also receive instantaneous email alerts whenever a new record of a particular plate is found — a system known internally as a “hot list.” (The same alerts can also be funneled to the Vigilant’s iOS app.) According to the privacy assessment, as many as 2,500 license plates could be uploaded to the hot list in a single batch, although the assessment does not detail how often new batches can be added.

According to the report, ICE first tried out Vigilant's system in 2012. It hoped to go live in 2014, but the Snowden documents chilled enthusiasm for mass surveillance temporarily. Now, the system is ready to roll, pre-stocked with a couple billion plate records for ICE to peruse as it expands its enforcement activities past the deportation of foreign criminals.

There are few nods to privacy, but they're mostly useless. ICE owns it own ALPR cameras but those won't feed into this database, which means other law enforcement agencies won't have access to ICE-generated plate records. Hot lists aren't forever. They'll expire after a year. And there will be audit trails for ICE agents who use the system, although it remains to be seen how serious ICE is about punishing misuse of this authority.

S.B. 712 would allow drivers to apply a removable cover to their license plates when they are lawfully parked, similar to how drivers are currently allowed to cover their entire vehicles with a tarp to protect their paint jobs from elements. While this would not prevent ALPRs from collecting data from moving vehicles, it would offer privacy for those who want to protect the confidentiality of their destinations.

Unfortunately, this legislation has struggled to find enough support to get it to the governor's desk. As the EFF reports, state senators who have stated support for pushing back against the White House's anti-immigrant policies failed to show support for a bill that would have slowed ICE's acquisition of plate records from their state. The initial vote, however, took place before the Verge broke the story of ICE's partnership with Vigilant Systems. Things could change on January 31's vote, now that new information has come to light.

from the this-is-not-theft dept

For many years we've talked about the kind of derangement that happens among many -- especially among those working for Homeland Security's Customs and ICE divisions -- considering the supposed "dangers" of counterfeit goods. Over and over again we've pointed to studies that have shown that the "harm" of counterfeits is massively overblown. And these are not just random studies picked out of a hat. Both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the OECD have put out studies on this. When you look at the details, you quickly learn that while there are a few cases of people tricked by counterfeit goods -- and a vanishingly small number of cases where people are put at risk due to counterfeits -- in many, many cases, no one is actually losing out due to counterfeits. They are frequently an aspirational buy. That is, the buyer knows they're buying a counterfeit good, but are doing so because they so appreciate the real version, but can't afford it. And studies show that buyers of counterfeits quite frequently buy the real deal later when they're able to afford it. Thus, counterfeits often act as marketing for the original.

But, for whatever reason, Homeland Security likes to play up the "threats" of counterfeits and makes lots of noise about how many counterfeit things it seizes at the border every year (or... not at the border -- such as the time it raided a lingerie store to get "counterfeit" panties advertising sports teams). And sure, Homeland Security really really wants you to believe it's protecting the public with this kind of thing.

But if that's the goal, explain this story. Harper Reed tried to buy a fancy Rimowa luggage on Amazon last year. There was no indication that it was counterfeit -- it was priced the same as actual Rimowa luggage. But customs intercepted the shipment and wouldn't let it in. That's fair enough, I guess, but it's the next part that's shocking. Because of this Customs refused to renew Reed's Global Entry membership. Global Entry, for those who don't know, is a process by which fliers who frequently travel internationally can fill out a form, go for an interview, pay some money... and be able to speed through customs upon re-entering the US. While some grumble about paying for access, it's actually a more reasonable security program than most -- in that it actually involves effectively pre-clearing people less likely to need scrutiny at the border.

But Reed's status was not renewed because he was listed as trying to "import counterfeit goods." Again, you can see the intent behind this rule. If someone is actually "importing" a bunch of counterfeit goods to sell, you can see how that might be a good reason to deny someone Global Entry. But Reed wasn't trying to import a bunch of counterfeit goods. He was trying to buy a suitcase. He didn't get it from Amazon (he bought one later from a store) and that's fair enough under the law -- but why hold that against him.

Apparently the geniuses at Homeland Security have little desire to distinguish a counterfeiting operation from a dude buying something on Amazon he thought was legit.

When CBP intercepts a shipment, says Mark Schonfeld, an intellectual property lawyer at Burns & Levinson LLP, in Boston, Massachusetts, it sends a seizure notice to the trademark holder (in this case, Rimowa), which includes the names of the importer and exporter. The brand can then decide what action it wants to take, if any. Going after the latter party can be difficult and costly, since the vast majority of counterfeits come from Asia (in 2016, nearly 90 percent of products seized by CBP originated in China and Hong Kong). The importer, however, is by definition domestic, making them the easier target.

Schonfeld says this is the first instance he’s heard of in which a consumer has been flagged for importing a single item, but that legally, the principle is the same. “It definitely can happen to a consumer,” he says. “You know, you can go to Tijuana, just right over the San Diego border and you can easily buy counterfeits there, but no consumer should think that coming back into the United States with the item is risk free.” Much more common are cases in which Amazon itself is named as the importer, particularly since it began courting Chinese sellers with favorable shipping terms in 2015, and as its Fulfillment By Amazon program expands by leaps and bounds each year, offering third-party merchants the chance to take advantage of the e-commerce giant’s logistics infrastructure, customer service, and even Prime two-day shipping by sending goods directly to its warehouses.

Again, at the very least, it seems that intent should be taken into account here. Buying something on Amazon, with no indication (not even price) that the luggage was counterfeit, should not lead one to being accused of being a counterfeiter. But, of course, with DHS feeling so damn strongly about the "evils" of counterfeiting, it's only to be expected that they'll overreact to situations like this as well.

from the keep-it-in-your-proverbial-pants,-moteliers dept

At some point in the recent past, Motel 6 owners decided they were deputized law enforcement personnel. So what if people paid for a night's worth of uninterrupted sleep and expected that visits from federal and local officials would be kept to a minimum. These owners -- which the Motel 6 corporation takes great pain to point out are "independent" owner/operators -- have decided to ingratiate themselves with untrustworthy organizations like ICE… or the local PD.

Some Motel 6s decided to fax guest lists to police departments every night. Others decided they'd turn over every name that looked slightly non-Caucasian to ICE. In both cases, Motel 6 (the corporation) brought the hammer down, swearing it had never given franchisees the permission to turn guest lists into tip sheets for law enforcement. The post-facto corporate rollback wasn't enough for Washington's Attorney General. The state looked into local policies after hearing about rogue ICE relationships in Arizona. It found more of the same occurring in Washington, resulting in a state lawsuit against company for turning guests list into ICE fodder.

The hotel chain Motel 6 routinely gave federal immigration agents guest lists with personal information that it used to make arrests, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by Washington’s attorney general.

At least six Motel 6 locations in the state provided the information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — some on a near-daily basis — without any reasonable suspicion, probable cause or search warrants, the lawsuit charges. Agents would then single out guests by their national identity, at times circling “Latino-sounding” names on the list, according to the court complaint.

The lawsuit [PDF] requests an injunction preventing Motel 6 employees from passing on information to ICE agents without being provided with at least some legal reason to do (probable cause) by government agents. If this were filed at a federal level, it wouldn't likely find a sympathetic court. A Supreme Court decision overturning a Los Angeles statute granting law enforcement constant, unchallengeable access is about the only restriction on sharing guest lists with law enforcement.

The allegations the Washington AG raises are concerning, but they're not actually illegal... at least not under federal law.

Since at least 2015, Motel 6 has had a policy or practice of providing to ICE agents, upon their request, the list of guests staying at Motel 6 the day of the agents' visit. The guest lists included some or all of the following information for each guest: room number, name, names of additional guests, guest identification number, date of birth, driver's license number, and license plate number.

ICE's usual practice was to come to Motel 6's reception desk and request the guest list from the receptionist. The receptionist would print out the guest list and give it to the ICE agent, along with a "law enforcement acknowledgment form" for the agent to sign, acknowledging receipt of the guest list. The ICE agent would review the guest list and identify individuals of interest to ICE. Motel 6 staff observed ICE identify guests of interest to ICE, including by circling guests with Latino-sounding names.

On a number of occasions after reviewing the guest list, ICE agents arrested or detained Motel 6 guests.

Motel 6 trained its new employees to follow the practice described above to provide guest lists to ICE agents upon request, without requiring the agents to show any reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or search warrant for the guest registry information.

However, at the state level, this appears to be a violation of local statutes.

Motel 6's privacy policy also states that Motel 6 may disclose guest registry information to law enforcement agencies pursuant to a court order or in compliance with any applicable law, regulation, rule, or ordinance.

Under Article 1, § 7 of the Washington Constitution, motel guest registry information constitutes a private affair protected from disclosure without probable cause. Motel 6 guests in Washington have a reasonable expectation of privacy that their guest registry information will not be disclosed to ICE without probable cause.

Motel 6 guests in Washington also have a common law right to the privacy of their guest registry information.

This is where the State AG hopes to prevent Motel 6 from using guest lists for ICE bait: at the state level where guest registry info is given more privacy protections than other places in the nation. It seems like ICE shouldn't be too put out by having to show a little probable cause paperwork before it starts browsing registries, but the government doesn't roll like that. It would be pretty easy for Motel 6 to get out from under this lawsuit. All it has to do is tell Washington franchisees to knock it off. It's unclear what benefit Motel 6 receives from this possibly-illegal relationship with ICE. So why not just institute a policy that actually complies with local laws?

It certainly won't make ICE happy. No federal agency likes having to ask permission from judges to perform searches. ICE is not a party to this lawsuit, but I'm sure it will find some way to make its presence felt. It may argue the Fourth Amendment does not require warrants to access third party records. Hopefully, the court presiding over this will remind ICE (and Motel 6) state laws can provide more protection than the Fourth Amendment without damaging federal authority. The Fourth Amendment is the baseline. Everything else above that -- established at the local level -- is a completely legal bonus for the state's residents.

from the bad-policies dept

Last week dozens of well known technologists sent a letter to Homeland Security arguing that Immigration & Customs Enforcement's (ICE) plans to use technology for "extreme vetting" is a really, really dumb idea.

According to its Statement of Objectives, the Extreme Vetting Initiative seeks to
make “determinations via automation” about whether an individual will become a
“positively contributing member of society” and will “contribute to the national interests.”
As far as we are aware, neither the federal government nor anyone else has defined,
much less attempted to quantify, these characteristics. Algorithms designed to predict
these undefined qualities could be used to arbitrarily flag groups of immigrants under a
veneer of objectivity.

Inevitably, because these characteristics are difficult (if not impossible) to define
and measure, any algorithm will depend on “proxies” that are more easily observed and
may bear little or no relationship to the characteristics of interest. For example,
developers could stipulate that a Facebook post criticizing U.S. foreign policy would
identify a visa applicant as a threat to national interests. They could also treat income
as a proxy for a person’s contributions to society, despite the fact that financial
compensation fails to adequately capture people’s roles in their communities or the
economy.

The Extreme Vetting Initiative also aims to make automated determinations
about whether an immigrant “intends to commit” terrorism or other crime. However,
there is a wealth of literature demonstrating that even the “best” automated decisionmaking
models generate an unacceptable number of errors when predicting rare
events. On the scale of the American population and immigration rates, criminal acts
are relatively rare, and terrorist acts are extremely rare. The frequency of individuals’
“contribut[ing] to national interests” is unknown. As a result, even the most accurate
possible model would generate a very large number of false positives - innocent
individuals falsely identified as presenting a risk of crime or terr

In short, this is the tech world telling DHS and ICE that its belief that there's a "nerd harder" solution to using computers and algorithms to sniff out terrorists is a load of pure hooey. It may be true, as Arthur C. Clarke once stated, that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," but the corollary does not apply: not all magical solutions can be implemented in technology. It's kind of ridiculous that actual technologists were needed to explain this to DHS, but that's where things are these days.

For those familiar with the process of civil asset forfeiture, the contents of the guide are mostly unsurprising. Despite the document dating back to 2010, ICE did confirm the version seen by The Intercept is its most recent guidance. ICE is allowed to seize property without bringing charges or securing convictions -- something still permitted by federal law (your state laws may vary) and greatly encouraged by the new head of the DOJ, Jeff Sessions.

What is surprising about the document is how much emphasis is placed on the seizure of real estate. As Ryan Devereaux and Spencer Woodman point out, ICE's forfeiture teams are pretty much property flippers, albeit ones working with the undeniable advantage of making zero initial investment.

Much of the handbook is devoted to describing the process of seizing real estate — homes, farms, and businesses — and it is in these pages that the dual priorities of financial gain and law enforcement objectives become most apparent. While the handbook contains little discussion on how to utilize asset forfeiture to maximize crime-fighting outcomes, there is extensive discussion of how agents should painstakingly determine whether a property is valuable enough to make seizure worthwhile

[...]

More than a dozen pages of the document describe an important — if perhaps surprising — role of AIRG agents: as real estate appraisers. Using the example of “houses used to store narcotics or harbor illegal aliens,” the manual walks agents through a comprehensive process of assessing homes and landed properties to determine the financial appeal to ICE of acquiring such real estate.

If ICE can obtain a warrant to search the property it plans to seize, it will usually send a private real estate appraiser along during the search. AIRG [Asset Identification and Removal Group] agents apparently ballpark property values using public databases -- something that tells ICE whether or not it should move forward with the forfeiture.

As is the case in most civil forfeiture operations, the connecting tissue of criminal activity doesn't need to be much more than gossamer-thin.

The manual instructs agents seeking to seize a property to work with confidential informants, scour tax records, and even obtain an interception warrant to determine whether “a telephone located on the property was used to plan or discuss criminal activity” in order to justify seizing the property.

You would think the phone would be the "guilty" property -- at least as far as you can follow forfeiture's twisted logic. Apparently not. According to ICE's guidance, the entire house around the landline is equally culpable.

The handbook also points out civil forfeiture is preferable to criminal forfeiture, thanks to its general disdain for due process. The key factor is the conviction itself -- something you'd think a law enforcement agency would value over seized property. In criminal proceedings, seized property is generally returned if the charges don't stick. Not so with civil forfeiture. ICE's guidance says when in doubt, go civil. That way the agency may still keep something, even if the alleged perp goes free.

ICE is by far the biggest contributor to the DHS's total forfeiture take. This can be expected to grow with the new administration's intense focus on illegal immigration. As with any government program experiencing sudden growth, one can expect an exponential leap in abuse.

from the offline-SESTA-ing dept

In the name of fighting sex trafficking, legislators are willing to make the internet mostly worthless. Punching a hole in Section 230 protections will encourage incumbents to limit user participation and prevent startups from ever making it off the ground. Proponents claim it's narrowly-targeted and abuse-proof, but the language would allow any service provider to be held accountable for the criminal actions of users. If traffickers can't use Facebook or Google thanks to heavier moderation, they'll move onto other websites and services until those too are rendered useless by government action.

Part of the problem with legislation like this is mission creep. It may start with sex trafficking, but it will inevitably be expanded to cover other illicit content. And sex trafficking itself is its own dodge. All the government has to do is claim something is trafficking and the hammer begins to fall.

This is because the term leaves no room for intelligent conversations. Proponents know people aren't likely to speak up against efforts to fight sex trafficking, especially when they point out this sometimes includes children. It becomes a governmental blank check for enforcement action -- something that deters questioning of the government's activities, much in the way the term "national security" has limited legislative and judicial discussion about surveillance overreach.

Following a controversial Aug. 16 raid of a West Oakland home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said repeatedly that the operation was part of a criminal human trafficking investigation. She also asserted that OPD did not violate Oakland's sanctuary city policy by assisting ICE — by providing several patrol officers to block off the street during the raid — because it was a criminal, not civil immigration matter.

Sounds ominous. But the paper trail undermines the official narrative.

But according to evidence presented by Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission Chair Brian Hofer at the commission's meeting last week, the raid hasn't resulted in a single criminal prosecution. Rather, the only person arrested, Santos de Leon, is facing civil immigration charges and could be deported.

This is generating controversy because it appears Oakland police violated the city's sanctuary statutes by providing assistance to ICE in routine immigration enforcement efforts. But that's not the only reason it's controversial. It appears ICE is using loaded language to redefine activities performed by citizens aiding stranded children.

Immigration advocates are worried that the West Oakland raid could be an example of a new and troubling trend: ICE has recently begun to classify the act of providing shelter and other assistance to unaccompanied minors who recently immigrated to the United States as "human trafficking," and is charging adults, often close family members, with the crime.

When someone refers to a bill containing massive collateral damage as "narrowly targeted," they're either being ignorant or disingenuous. No one knows how to exploit legislation better than government agencies, and ICE calling acts of aid "human trafficking" (or "sex trafficking," according to the Oakland PD police chief) allows it to utilize local law enforcement and bypass local restrictions.

This is an IRL example of the exploitability of the terminology tied to SESTA. It's apparently being abused to allow local law enforcement agencies to violate local laws. Letting legislation like SESTA loose on the internet will result in similar abusive acts, accelerating mission creep's inevitable advance.

from the Operation-Goalpost-Relocation dept

When you've got an official narrative to deliver, you need everyone to pitch in to keep it from falling apart. No one can say ICE didn't try. The Trump administration -- bolstered by supporting statements conjecture from DOJ and DHS officials -- has portrayed undocumented immigrants as little more than nomadic thugs. Unfortunately, there's hardly any evidence available to back up the assertion that people here illegally are more likely to commit serious criminal acts.

Back in February, shortly after Trump handed down immigration-focused executive orders, ICE went all in on arresting undocumented visitors and immigrants. Included in this push was a focus on so-called "sanctuary cities" like Austin, Texas, which had vowed to push back against Trump's anti-immigrant actions.

On February 10, as the raids kicked off, an ICE executive in Washington sent an “URGENT” directive to the agency’s chiefs of staff around the country. “Please put together a white paper covering the three most egregious cases,” for each location, the acting chief of staff of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wrote in the email.

It's a good starting point, especially if the administration is relying on you to back up its assertions. ICE was willing to go the extra mile to do just that, apparently.

“If a location has only one egregious case — then include an extra egregious case from another city.”

This is an interesting ploy: cannibalizing nearby cities' reporting in order to present some semblance of an "egregious case" immigrant nightmare --one that would need to be stripped of redundancy before final presentation.

Unfortunately for ICE agents, you can't make something out nothing. Three cases per city proved to be almost impossible. Many raids failed to uncover even one egregious case. With the clock ticking down, some ICE offices decided to grab "egregious cases" completely unrelated to the current operation.

In February 11, an official responded to a colleague’s list of egregious cases by pointing out that they were unrelated to the ongoing operation. “The arrest dates are before any operation and even before the EO’s. What is up with these cases?” the official wrote.

What's up with those cases is there were almost zero new cases to report to the man upstairs. Hundreds of arrests were made, but many involved people with no prior criminal record. In the remaining arrests, most of the priors found were minor violations, with the worst being drunk driving.

Not exactly the "public safety threat" the Trump administration had promised. When it became clear the "egregious case" reports might total only a handful of serious criminal offenses from hundreds of arrests nationwide, ICE quickly applied its own spin.

As criticism escalated, ICE shifted to downplaying the operation as “no different than the routine,” telling reporters that the raids were the same “targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis,” and suggesting off the record that claims to the opposite were “false, dangerous, and irresponsible.” As it became clear that dozens of individuals with no criminal history had been apprehended, ICE shifted gears and told reporters that in addition to targeting safety threats, the raids were always meant to target those whose only crimes were immigration-related, like re-entering the U.S. after deportation…

By spinning it this way, ICE can pay needed lip service to the administration's "dangerous immigrants" narrative and portray the lack of egregious cases as the result of the banal day-to-day work of immigration enforcement. But in doing so, it undercuts the narrative it's trying to serve. If there are so many dangerous criminals out there, why isn't ICE focused on them, rather than dozens of people whose only criminal act is a lack of documentation? ICE can't have it both ways. Neither can the White House.